Library of Cultural References

Chain of Hearts

When night fell I went out walking down by the river, over near Grandview, back and forth a few times over the bridge. When I got back it was midnight. I played music. Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, over and over again. I ate leftover food. I turned out the lights and sat alone in the dark. I was restless, churned up and confused. I began drinking and crying and so I pulled out all the old Bob Dylan albums. Blood On The Tracks I think was one I played over and over. And Joni Mitchell. I began to talk to myself. To my dead father, and to my mother. To Vincent Van Gogh, to Edvard Munch, to Ernst Kirchner, the German painter I loved so much, and to Dorothea Lange, the American photographer. Carson McCullers. Rauschenberg. I had conversations with all the artists I’d grown to love over the years. I felt they were there with me, even though I knew the thought was ridiculous. They were there and I was choking in front of them.
From Austrailia, Tegan Low writes, "Maureen McCarthy is an Australian author whose best selling novel Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life, was made into a four-part television mini-series."